It's wet and a little windy this morning. The monsoon rains that people have been waiting for appear to have finally turned up.

Darwin's port is undergoing a $35 million expansion: most of the work is associated with the mining and gas industry.

Terry O'Connor is the chief executive officer of the Darwin Port Corporation

TERRY O'CONNOR: Well, we know in four years' time we'll have another LNG (liquefied natural gas) plant in the port. I suspect we'll also have additional wharf space, another 300 metres is being built as we speak for the marine supply base for the oil and gas area. And I believe there'll probably be another couple of hundred metres of wharf space required at that time.

TONY EASTLEY: Darwin's port should also be busy exporting a lot of beef - but it's not. The live export trade has collapsed.

But there's a separate issue with cattle. There's not an abattoir in Darwin. It means cattle earmarked for slaughter are being transported halfway across the country.

For years there's been this odd situation where cattle are taken to either Townsville or Perth. Once killed and processed at the abattoirs thousands of kilometres and a three day road trip from here, the frozen meat more often than not ends up being shipped north to markets in Asia.

There is at least one bright spot on the horizon. AACo (Australian Agricultural Company) which runs 660,000 head of cattle across the Top End is building an abattoir forty minutes' drive outside of Darwin. The company wants it to be operating by the end of the year and eventually work up to a production of over 1000 cattle a day.

Stu Cruden, the general manager of subsidiary Northern Australian Beef Limited, was brought in from New Zealand especially to set up the plant.

(Question to Stu Cruden) This abattoir that will be built where we're standing at the moment is an $85 million investment. Have you received much help from governments with that?

STU CRUDEN: We received a huge amount of verbal support and that's about where it's finished. It's quite disappointing we believe. We've put in $85 million as an investment. We will employ 350 full-time jobs here. That equates to about 800 jobs altogether when you take the follow on and support people and that sort of thing.

But no, we haven't really had the support that we thought we would get just around the infrastructure to be able to build the facility we're looking to.

TONY EASTLEY: If you'd been a mining company do you think you may have got a better deal?

STU CRUDEN: Well I think that the issue is that the mining companies have a very strong voice in Canberra and the agri-business doesn't at the moment. And I think that's the difference between the mining people getting support compared to the agri-business.

There needs to be a strategy, there needs to be some investment in the north because the opportunity of going through the port of Darwin and into South-East Asia is going to grow very, very quickly.

TONY EASTLEY: People in the industry - producers and agri-businesses - all say the same thing: that primary industry doesn't have any grunt in Canberra.

And yet they point out that the Government's own white paper on Asia spells out the giant potential for agriculture.

Jack Burton is a cattle producer. He owns seven properties in the Kimberley in the north-west of Western Australia.

He says the Government of the day will need to do more than just issue white papers about what should be done; instead it needs to act and soon.

JACK BURTON: I think you've got to be optimistic. If you weren't an optimist you certainly wouldn't be in the agricultural industry. Look at Indonesia for instance, you know, 240-odd million people closer to us than Perth. And one thing that humans need, right or wrong, and it's not a fad, is they need food.

TONY EASTLEY: For that to happen though doesn't, something's got to give, doesn't it? Indonesia's not taking your beef at the moment.

JACK BURTON: No, look I think so. I think something has to give. I think it's just an absolute debacle what's happened with Indonesia. We've got a population, we had probably the most finely tuned relationships internationally at an agricultural level with a live trade producing feeder cattle going into Indonesian feed lots to supply their population. And it was just, it was ruined by politics.

And I think the future is basically, that's a good lesson that sooner politics gets out of this and let's relationships and supply and demand start creating them relationships, I'll think will be better off for everyone to achieve what everyone needs which is connection between those who produce the food and those who need it.

TONY EASTLEY: Cattle producer Jack Burton who's well on his way to starting his own small abattoir in the Kimberley.

And by the way, the NT economy is forecast to grow faster than any other state or territory over the next four years.

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